Vilcabamba

This week's history lesson goes to 16th century Peru, when the conquistadors of Spain subjugated the Incas.

The Incan Empire was huge, the South American equivalent of the Roman Empire, stretching from Colombia to Peru to Chile and Argentina. But in 1532, a fellow named Francisco Pizarro arrived with just 180 men and 30 horses, and captured the Incan king, Atuahalpa. He was ransomed, but Pizarro had him executed anyway. A puppet emperor, Manco Inca, was installed by Pizarro.

But Manco Inca rebelled after Pizarro's half brother, Gonzalo, stole his wife. The Incas holed up in a hidden city called Vilcabamba. Eventually the Spanish won the war, and the Incan empire died out. For hundreds of years the precise location of Vilcabamba was unknown.

An American explorer, Hiram Bingham, was looking for Vilcabamba in 1911 when he ended up discovering Machu Picchu instead. It wasn't until 1964 that Gene Savoy pinpointed what is generally accepted as the location of Vilcabamba, also called Espirtu Pampa.

The conquest of the Incas is a sad and treacherous tale. There are a lot of untimely deaths associated with it, Atuahalpa just one of them. He was strangled to death. But, like many indigenous people of the Americas, the Incas were involved in internecine warfare before the Spanish ever arrived. Atuahalpa had usurped the kingship from Huayna Capac. Capac had fifty (!) sons, Manco Inca being one of them, and he fled when his father was defeated. Therefore, Pizarro, being the enemy of his enemy, sounded like a good deal. He thought they were saviors sent by God.

Of course, there was nothing less trustworthy than the Spanish conquistadors. After their treacherous behavior towards Manco, the Incan ruler gathered an army of 200,000 men and laid siege to the Spanish capital at Cuzco. Vilcabamba was used as a base of operation, a place so difficult to get to that the Spanish could not find it (indeed, no one found it until 1964). Though he held off the Spanish for many years, he ultimately founded a Neo-Incan state, which lingered for a few decades before complete Spanish domination.

The civil war of the Incas certainly helped Pizarro, who took advantage of the situation, but there also came to be a turf war among the Spanish. Pizarro had an adversary named Diego Almagro II, also called "El Mozo" (The Lad). He was the son of a fellow conquistador, who fell out with Pizarro's brothers and imprisoned them. One of them, Hernando was released, which turned out to be a mistake, as he executed Almagro. The son swore revenge, and staged a coup d'etat at Lima, where Francisco was killed. But El Mozo ended up getting captured and was executed in 1542.

I've just scratched the surface of this fascinating story. Again, it would make an excellent movie. Of course, there was a movie about the Spanish in Peru, Werner Herzog's Aguirre, The Wrath Of God, but that was about events after the conquest.